Voiceless
by TakeAWhackAtIt
Summary: Spencer Reid dreams in silence.


Title: Voiceless

Pairing: None

Rating: PG

Summary: Spencer Reid dreams in silence.

Author Notes: Though this is not my first venture into the world of fanfiction, it is the first Criminal Minds fic I have written. It came to me at 3:30 in the morning as I was trying to fall asleep, and wouldn't leave me alone until it was written. I wasn't sure if I was going to post this or not, so please let me know what you think!

Spencer Reid is not an auditory eidetic. He can recall things he's seen or read at a moment's notice, scanning the archive of his mind to find that one quote, that one statistic that he needs, with little effort. Sound, on the other hand, comes with less ease- the lilts and intonations unique to a person's voice are not as easily stored as the clear, uniform lines that form words or the crisp colors of images and photographs.

He wonders if that's the reason why his dreams are silent.

In his dreams, there are no words. His actions and those of others are laid out clearly in front of him, stripped of the words he has always used to defend, to explain, to make sense of the madness and chaos. He has tried, his entire life, to use words to rationalize the pain away, and they have failed him.

And so, Spencer Reid dreams in silence.

The detached part of him finds it ironic, in a way. He is known for his words, the constant stream of chatter and knowledge he provides during the day. They are his shield, his defense against the world. If he speaks first, and if he keeps speaking, he can stop others from talking. And if they can't speak, their words can't hurt.

He dreams of the day his mother was taken away- the day he _sent_ her away- far more often than he likes,

but less often than he feels he should. He can see her lips move, but no sound emerges.

On some level, he recognizes that this is because what traumatized him that day wasn't what his mother said. Because he could deal with the words- he was used to her words, her desperate pleas and hurled accusations and the ever-rarer whispers of affection. His mother was a professor of literature, an expert at words and their usage. Who better than she to teach him the futility of words? Words could be forgotten, manipulated, ignored.

The look in her eyes, though, as the men from the sanitarium escorted (_dragged)_ her out the door…that he can never forget. The fear, the betrayal, the confusion, the complete and utter _pain_ he saw there- that would remain locked in his mind forever.

So, when he wakens from his dream (_nightmare_) with his mother's name on his lips, the sound echoing through the room off bare walls and ice-cold wood floors, he weeps.

One night, Reid dreams of a time just after his father had left and he was still reeling from the knowledge that he was now both son and caretaker to his mother. She had been quiet all day, spending hours reading in her room and refusing to emerge in spite of Spencer's repeated urgings. He'd made spaghetti for dinner- one of his mother's favorites- because it was simple and one of the few things they had the ingredients for in their increasingly bare pantry. He'd thought that the familiar scents would, just for one night, bring his mother out of the world she'd created herself and back into his.

As Spencer had watched the spaghetti sauce drip slowly down the wall, he'd known he was wrong. As his mother had shouted something about poison and sabotage in his ear, the meaningless words had been lost to the bright red of the tomato sauce against the clean white of the wall, creating seemingly random patterns and fractals on the impromptu canvas before him.

In his worst dreams, the tomato sauce is inevitably replaced by streaks of blood. The cries of victims, just like those of his mother, are silenced.

It's fitting, in a way. He knows now what they feel, knows what it is to moan useless pleas and cry out in helpless agony. He knows what it is for those cries to be heard too late- so late that they might as well not have been heard at all. He knows what it is to have others watch and be unable to act, knows what it is to both be the watcher and the watched. After the hurt has been inflicted, the words are futile; all that remains are the scars, the images seared indelibly into his mind.

Without words, all that remains is truth.

In sleep, all his defenses are stripped bare, all pleas are silenced. Sound gives way to sight, crisp and clear. Illusion gives way to reality, harsh and unfiltered.

And so, Spencer Reid cannot escape, even in his dreams.

Especially in his dreams.


End file.
